Marobella's Branding SoapBox

I Love The Geico Lizard

Every now and then I come across a brand that truly pays off its proposition. For about two years now, I "switched to Geico and saved a ton of money on my car insurance." And, every time I touch that brand whether through their website or their customer service, the experience is consistently awesome. The essence of their advertising comes through in the tone of their service reps and the language they use on their website. And to boot, they always deliver on their brand promise.

Every service brand should study and learn from Geico. Brand integrated goes far beyond just making sure everything looks the same in your marketing materials. Paying off the brand message stretches to the intangibles.

Bugs, Tattoos and Jeeps, Oh My!

Two of out of three ain't bad here. I love tattoos and I have owned two Jeep Wranglers in my life. A few posts ago, I slammed Chrysler for their Dr. Z campaign - so in all fairness, I have to say that I love this new campaign from Jeep. They are capitalizing on the success of the TLC show Miami Ink to create a campaign that will surely resonate with the GenY/GenX target. Edmunds.com wrote about the campaign to promote the '07 Wrangler here 2007 Jeep Wrangler Campaign.

Good idea, lets hope the execution is as good. And, if you watch Miami Ink regularly like me - you know that one of the guys drives a Cadillac Escalade and Ami drives a vintage muscle car. Hopefully, they thought that through and are going to have some Ink'd out Wranglers sitting on Washington Avenue in front of the shop during the season.

People Love Their Crocs

If you've seen these crazy looking, clog like shoes around the US lately. You are not alone. The new craze in footwear has done what very few other shoe brands have been able to do. If a customer says something like this about their shoes: "If I could marry them, I would." That is brand loyalty. And to boot, they are not attractive. They bring attention to your feet with their bright colors and definitely make a statement about who you are. Experts say its the low price point and value quotient that get people to wear them - I am not so sure. I think people that want to make a fashion statement and self-express is more the reason.

The brand has a testimonial section on their site that is worth checking out Crocs Brand Testimonials.

Custom Brand Engagement

Very cool way for people to engage, what would nornally be considered a low-involvement category. And, I'm still not really sure why you would want a customized bottle of ketchup for your wedding. Hey, to each their own. 

Christmas on Labor Day - Retail Marketing Gone Wild

Every year I find myself asking myself, why are these christmas trees up in the mall? August was just yesterday. Now, having worked with many retail brands - I know that the retail marketers are thinking about and planning for the upcoming christmas season months, sometimes a year before you or I. They need to make their numbers in the fourth quarter because over 40% of their sales are usually concentrated in a 30-45 day window. There's a lot on the line.

But seriously, does seeing Christmas trees in September do anything to accelerate my spending earlier in the season. Does it flatten the curve as they would say in the board room? Viscerally, I would say no. But just yesterday at Costco - my wife said to me. "Look at all this christmas stuff, we should buy it now before they run out." And it dawned on me. Costco has it figured out. Offer very cool stuff and create a limited time only feel and people will buy it in September. Offer the same junk as everyone else (Sears, Macy's, Filenes, Carsons are you listening?) and yes, we will wait until you discount the crap out of it and buy it on 12/24.

We are trained to wait until the last minute for holiday retail and for the most part, I cant believe that seeing christmas trees in September makes me want to spend quicker. It just reminds me that I do have some spending to do and I'm not happy about it.

Elmo TMX Death Threat

Back away from the Elmo TMX...

Come on. People are threatening each other's lives in a Target in Tampa over Elmo TMX. People, don't we have bigger issues in our world whether or not you get an TMX for your kid or to put on ebay for a healthy profit. I guess not.

Well, good for Fisher Price in creating the type of buzz that products and brands dream about. They created a classic "black ops" product that was "leaked" to the public. "What will the new TMX do?" They seeded the social media channels, created buzz above the line and basically told us that this was the new, hottest product this year. And then, had the big talk show hosts tell us the same thing.

And now we know that the TMX does all kinds of crazy things with its limbs, falling over and maniacal laughs. The madness that has ensued is exactly what Fisher Price wanted - lets just hope nobody gets hurt in the process.

Surviving a Brand Crisis - The Spinach Disaster

Sometimes a crisis hits a brand or product category so hard that is can be extremely difficult to recover. Think the Tylenol crisis from years ago. Often, the brand must call on its equity reserves to survive such a predicament.

Would you be the first person to try spinach once it comes back on the market? How long would it take for you to put some spinach back in your salad? What would it take for you to feel that spinach, or any other vegetable is safe?

The spinach industry and the big brands in the category have some work to do for consumers to come back and engage the category. I offer some ideas and strategies that may work in getting the community to feel safe.

1. Bring back Popeye as the official spokesperson for spinach.
2. The President of Dole in a documentary on Nightline eating a huge spinach salad.
3. Highlight the science behind why this happened and why it will never happen again, we think...
4. Show the farmers pleaing for people to eat spinach.
5. Give it away for free until people feel comfortable.

Seriously, this is a huge challenge for the brands, companies and the government. Different from the Tylenol crisis, this has opened a huge conversation about how easy it would be for a terrorist to infiltrate our food systems. That poses an even bigger problem for the brand marketers. I would imagine a large-scale awareness program that highlights why this happened and the new safety measures that are in place will help us feel better about eating our greens.

Cutting Edge Brand Communities

Fisk-A-Teers Blog Just came across a brand that is finding a way to engage a heavy-user segment. It's just getting started, but it is a great way to start a dialogue with a customer segment. Fiskars makes scissors and other cutting devices - scrapbooking and crafters use these everyday. So, lets give them a place to congregate - pretty cool!

 

I Want To Ask Dr. Z....

.....what results mean to him?

$225 Million is a lot of sparkplugs to spend on a marketing campaign to get what I saw in the news today. (see end of Post) I'm not going to critique the campaign in this post, just point out something that we talk about with clients everyday. The only thing that matters, really, is that product walks out the door at a faster pace - that we are building short and long-term value. Disclosure: I own a Chrysler product, a Dodge actually. I bought it not because of Dr. Z, but because the campaign for my particular car hit me in the ol' ticker and the design of the car itself is perfect - not because some german, super-rich guy was telling me to.

AdRants wrote about the response that Chrysler had when AdAge blasted their Ask Dr. Z campaign.

Here are some excerpts of their response:

An independent study performed by IAG Research found the Dr. Z campaign "significantly  outperformed" almost every one of what the leading advertising research organization calls its "norms."
Dr. Z Campaign IAG Auto Norm
General Recall 50% 43%
Brand Recall 29% 22%
Message Recall 24% 16%
Likeability 16% 12%
Brand Linkage 59% 52%
Message Linkage 81% 69%
Likeability Linkage 54% 53%

Here is a quote from The Financial Times, page 13:

"DaimlerChrysler plans to cut vehicle shipments to its US-based Chrysler dealers by 24% during the current quarter in a belated drive to reduce swollen inventories of trucks and sports utility vehicles."

Followed by this headline in a sidebar article:

Reputation of man at the wheel badly dented

The honeymoon is over for Dieter Zetsche.

Damn, I wonder if its because they just cant get it right and offer a consistently unique and interesting product to Americans or the fact that he has become a talking head through his ad campaigns. And, think about Bill Ford - he just stepped aside as well. He was also the talking head in their ad campaigns.

Note to Car Companies: Rich guys with or without accents DO NOT SELL CARS. Not to me or any other person. We buy cars because they connect emotionally with our ideals. Whether your ideal is that of being a parent and you want a minivan or because you cant let your youth go and you want a Dodge Charger.

So, all those fancy quant stats on recall, likeability etc - doesn't do much. Hey, dont get me wrong - its a step in the right direction to move the needle in a positive direction on brand attributes, but at the end of the day - we all know that sales is king. I applaud Chrysler for fighting back - but if you knew that this may happen with sales, you might have wanted to just stay quiet.

Radical Branding

As we explore how a brand can make more meaningful and psychological connections with people, I often find our conversations diverting to issues in people's lives that capture a big piece of heart real estate. Things like, sports team allegiances, relationships with pets, college comraderies, the corner pizza shop and usually religion.

To me, religion is an ultimate form of branding. The use of icons, marks and other multi-sensory effects including music, incense and the most powerful form of community, the congregation.

I couldn't help but think of this parallel again as Pope Benedict made world headlines with his comment about the Prophet Mohammed and members of the islamic religion took offense and responded in a rather violent way. While these acts are reprehensible and beyond my imagination - it did beg me to think about how these people could be so passionate and loyal to their brand that they would go this extreme.

While these topics are not easy to discuss and usually make people uncomfortable in our conference room when the topic of religion and branding come up in the same conversation. There is something to be learned of that emotional relationship.